Court Rules OSHA Can't Mandate Companies Track Workplace Mental Health Issues
A U.S. appeals court has ruled in a case involving Exxon Mobil that OSHA cannot require businesses to document work-related mental illnesses reported by employees.
Reuters reports that a unanimous three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said on Tuesday, July 21, 2026, that a requirement in federal law that employers periodically report work-related deaths, injuries and illnesses only applies to physical conditions — not mental.
The court reversed a citation and $700 penalty that OSHA issued against Exxon Mobil for not disclosing that an employee had reported developing post-traumatic stress disorder after a fire at the Texas facility where he worked.
OSHA has required employers to record and annually report work-related mental illnesses since at least 2001. But a proper reading of federal law, the court said, shows that it was only meant to address traditional workplace injuries and not mental health issues.
"However commendable OSHA’s desire to improve mental health in the workplace, like all agencies, OSHA’s authority to regulate toward that end is constrained by the limits of power Congress delegated to the agency," Circuit Judge Cory Wilson wrote for the court, according to Reuters.
Federal law directs the Secretary of Labor to "prescribe regulations requiring employers to maintain accurate records of, and to make periodic reports on, work-related deaths, injuries and illnesses." The Labor Department has delegated those powers to OSHA.
OSHA cited Exxon Mobil in 2022 after a union reported to the agency that the company failed to document the Texas employee's mental health issues. The worker had twice accompanied firefighters into a burning building to help them close valves that were fueling a fire, according to filings in the case.
The company challenged the citation, which was upheld in 2024 by an administrative law judge. A review board declined to take up the case and Exxon Mobil appealed to the 5th Circuit, based in New Orleans, arguing that tracking mental illnesses was outside of OSHA's purview.
The court on Tuesday agreed. When the Occupational Safety and Health Act was adopted in 1970, the term "illness" was widely understood to refer to an unhealthy condition of the body and not the mind, the panel said, according to the Reuters report
"The enumerated objects of OSHA’s wide-ranging inspection power are categories of things that risk physical harm," Wilson wrote.
The panel included Circuit Judges Jennifer Walker Elrod and Jerry Smith.
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